Anglican church in Carmichael mine heartland to divest from fossil fuels

The Anglican church in Australia’s largest coalmining region, including the site of Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine, has vowed to renounce interests in fossil fuels.

The Anglican diocese of Rockhampton, which includes central Queensland mining and gas towns across 20 parishes – the largest of which is bigger than Victoria – voted to divest from the likes of thermal coal and coal seam gas at a synod meeting on 20 May.

A group of about 70 priests and church representatives passed two motions committing the church to ethical investments, a criteria which puts fossil fuels in the same category as arms dealing, tobacco, alcohol and gambling, wage exploitation and pornography.

That position likely leaves scope to retain interests in coking coal for steel but focuses on renewables for energy investments.

Lindsay Howie, the dean of St Paul’s cathedral in Rockhampton, said the diocese’s investments were “pretty much bugger all compared to the rest of the world”.

“Nevertheless, we’re encouraging Christians to exercise responsibility in terms of where they put their investments and to think seriously about wind energy and solar energy,” he said.

“That’s where we’d like it to be going.”

The Rockhampton diocese, which takes in Gladstone, Moranbah and Clermont – the closest town to Adani’s proposed site for Australia’s largest coalmine in the Galilee Basin – includes a population of about 48,000 people who identify as Anglican.

The motion called for scrapping investments in companies “significantly involved in or deriving more than 25% of their annual income” from “polluting the atmosphere, soil or water resources [or] the production or use of fossil fuels”.

It also renounces investments in armaments, gambling, tobacco, liquor, x-rated imagery and industries that unfairly exploit employees or the disadvantaged.

Howie said the motions were “very broad but really it’s about exercising social responsibility”.

He said “one of the great areas of concern” locally was that mining development of the Galilee Basin represented the permanent scarification of “some of the most beautiful and productive agricultural land we have in Queensland”.

“That’s to say nothing of the Indigenous perspective in terms of the sacredness of that particular land,” Howie said.

“If you’ve been into Moura, Moranbah, Dysart, there are huge spoil heaps, the overburden, sitting slap-bang on what used to be incredibly productive land.

“One of the problems with it now is they’ve tried to do the reclamation and, try as they might, it’ll take a million years for that land to ever be productive again because it’s full of heavy minerals and metals and acids.

“What we’re going to end up with in terms of the whole Galilee Basin is a scar from Rolleston to Springsure, 100km wide, for about 500 to 600km.

“It’s just a staggering invasion of some of the most productive agricultural land in Queensland.”